Living Dead Girl

It is the height of irresponsibility to recommend this book to any but the most mature readers. It is not for the "young adult." This book should only be available to adults for the following reasons, and I defy any reader to find a child psychologist or psychiatrist who would differ with this opinion after reading this novel. First, take a look at some of these excerpts:Talking about herself after she's first kidnapped and raped:"Open my eyes, see a girl, black and blue all over, dried blood along her thighs. Red brown stains smeared across the hairless juncture between." She's worried her captor knows she stole and ate some candy. He's starving her, first to delay puberty, and thereafter so she'll continue to look like a little girl."I look at the knife on the kitchen counter and picture it in my chest." He's constantly telling her he'll go and kill her mother, father and sister if she doesn't comply totally, at all times. The thing is, he has news clippings to prove he did just that to the last girl he kidnapped, whom he also killed when she got "too old."He gives her a yogurt for dinner. She scoops a little out with her fingers because he gives her no utensil (we see him starving her throughout the book)." "Come over here. Give me a kiss hello." I get up and walk over to him. He frowns and I hunch over so I barely come up to his shoulder. "Alice, my baby," he says, kissing my cheek. Then he shoves me to my knees. When he's finished, he throws the rest of my yogurt away. "It spoils so easily," he says. "I wouldn't want you to get sick...." " At the waxing parlor:" "Day off from School, someone asks?"..."Skipping," I say, stripping off my clothes, down to one of Ray's old T-shirts. Smell of him all over me, always. "I used to do that," the woman says, smiling more like we share a secret. She has a mole on her face with two hairs growing out of it. You'd think she'd notice a thing like that. "Ready," I say lying down, and the woman motions for me to spread my legs. "You want it all gone?" I nod. She is supposed to ask how old I am, and maybe other things. Something...""She starts to wax. My eyes burn and then water as she rips hair away, stripping my flesh. It is good for women to look like little girls now, to have no hair between their legs...""Ray likes how smooth I am, how raw my skin is. It burns by the time he's done touching it. "No breakfast tomorrow," he says afterward. "I think you might be over 100 pounds. That's not acceptable.""The day I got too tall to wear the white dress with the short, puffy sleeves and little tucks along the chest, he filled the kitchen sink with water and shoved my head into it. I was thirteen then, and when I tried to stay down after he'd held me there, lungs burning, inside of my head going dark, he hauled me out and slapped me so hard the right side of my face grew a hand-shaped bruise, jaw to forehead. I couldn't go outside for a week. No one missed me.Two days later, when my face was still swollen hot, he came home with a lock of my mother's hair. He wouldn't tell me how he got it, even when I cried and crawled onto his lap to beg the way he likes best.""Ray doesn't want me getting pimples or my period, and so he makes me take a pill for both every day. The one for pimples dries out my skin, and makes the sun blotch me angry red. The one to prevent my period does just that, and although the ads on TV say it just makes your period less painful, I never get mine. I don't ask Ray why. I only got my period once, late last year, and Ray got so angry he took out a knife and made me sit on a chair in the corner of the living room. He looked at me for a long, long time, and then tied me to the chair and left me there until the bleeding stopped. He wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't look at me. Food and water once a day, a trip to the bathroom each morning and night. One time, I stood up and blood dripped down my leg and onto the carpet and he threw up. And then he rubbed my face in it. When the bleeding stopped he made me scrub myself, the chair, the carpet all around it, and then he threw the chair out and gave me the pills.""Ray met the Alice before me when he was nineteen and she was eight. He keeps the newspaper clippings from when the police found her body, from the funeral and afterward. Sometimes when he reads them he touches the picture of her in the article, black and white photo of a little lost girl, and cries. He cries and says he's sorry, so sorry, and do I forgive him? Head on my lap, breath hot on my thighs. I say yes for her. I say yes and used to figure out how many days until I was fifteen while he hunched over me..." Lessons the girl comes up with: "THREE LIFE LESSONS:1. No one will see you.2. No one will say anything.3. No one will save you."About getting him a new little girl to replace her." " I'll help you," I tell him. "I'll find what you need." He kisses my cheek and then rolls off me, motioning for me to get up. "That's my girl." Not for much longer, I think, and bend over, touch my fingers to my curled up mouth. "I see that," Ray says, and yanks my jaw up, looks at me. "I see that smile. You want to help me, don't you? You want to teach our girl everything I like." I nod, and he shoves me down again, forgetting dinner in his visions of this girl to come, this new child. This new me." "...in the night, happy dreams that wake him up and make him roll me over, my head pressed into the pillow. Suffocation looks so easy but no matter how hard I press my face down, no matter how I try to breathe in fabric, not air, there is no escape for me. He sleeps with one arm thrown across me after, and I lie stinging sharp all over, a wet sticky puddle under me. Soon there will be a little girl here, a real one with tiny arms and legs for Ray to push into."In the context of a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old reader, conjuring a lifelike depiction of a child sex-slave's day-to-day life at the whim of a psychopathic pedophile serves no valid purpose, irrespective of the quality of the writing. For readers who have not reached the age of majority, at the very least, this novel is positively pornographic, i.e., it contains obscene material without artistic value.Kids don't do well with adult information until they're developmentally adults.You can't speed emotional development with cognitive/intellectual content, but you can severely damage someone emotionally by trying to do so.

: [...]the basicsChilling. Devastating. Living Dead Girl is a story of every parent's, and every child's, worst nightmare. We enter the world of Alice, five years after she has been kidnapped by the abusive Ray. The story winds between her memories of that fateful day and her struggle to escape his new plan for her: find a new Alice. This isn't for the weak stomached. Alice goes through some of the worst torture, physical and sexual, a person can experience. In books like this, it's easy for the the violence to become maudlin or offensively exploitative. Instead of a meaningful book, it becomes little better than a shower scene in a slasher film. Scott avoids that pitfall. By focusing on Alice's mental and emotional reactions rather than the details of the tortures, she shows a faithful picture of the horror without making it tacky. Alice is instantly lovable and her story is a mix of thriller and memoir that picks up and doesn't let go.plot . 5/5There's no slow buildup. You're thrown right into Alice's hell. It's an interesting choice. We see the kidnapping and glimpses of the past several years in flashback chapters, but not directly. We see her memories. It allows the story to pick up right away and to avoid getting down in a lot of exposition. It also allows us to come in at Alice's worst moment: the moment Ray says he has a new plan for her. This plan, to steal another child, is horrifying in itself, and a clever literary choice. It shows us just how broken Alice is mentally--so desperate for freedom from her abuse that she'll do anything to remove Ray's attention from her. The ending is abrupt, but I don't think it would have been good for it to drag either.concept . 5/5You see it a lot on crime shows, but this is the first book I've read about it. It's a rare and horrific thing, kidnapping and sexual slavery. It make for a book that could be sensationalized. Used as "torture porn." It's not. Scott does a great job of portraying Alice's life faithfully. The story focuses mostly on her inner thoughts and reactions, so we see the true damage caused by this situation, beyond just the physical. It's an important point to make, and it underscores the message of the title--Living Dead Girl--perfectly.characters . 5/5There aren't many characters. Alice lives a secluded life with her abuser, who doesn't even appear in the text as often as you'd expect. However, we still know him intimately. We know him through Alice's descriptions of his abuse. Her fear of him. The details she slips about his life and his threats. We even pity him, briefly, while still hating him. In the same way, Jake is both lovable and loathable. He's no prince charming, but he's as deeply broken as Alice and looking for any way to escape. He's that dark part of all of us.style . 5/5The style is beautiful, lyrical, poetic at times. But not in a flowery way. It shows how deeply Alice lives in her inner world. Dead, but still moving through the world. Still forming impressions. Her voice has a dreamlike, trancelike quality to it--perfect for a zombie, a Living Dead Girl. It's gorgeous writing that you don't get to see much in the young adult genre.mechanics . 5/5Part flashback, part thriller, part philosophy. We get impressions, memories, thoughts, dreams--it's like being inside of Alice's head. And of course the formatting is polished and pretty.take home messageA chilling slice of a tortured life that shows just how deeply abuse can leave scars, in and out. Read more

This book is amazing once I started reading it I didnt stop until I fished it (not lieing I finish it in less than a day now I need a new book lol) the only bad part is how detailed and sad it is some parts made me sick to my stomach. So as long as you can handle the messed up things in this book I 100% recommend it.

First book I read of hers. Picks you up from the beginning. The ending of the book was ok. Not as good as I was hoping for an ending.

I knew this wasn't going to be an easy read but I wasn't completely prepared for how brutally realistic it was going to be. I loved Bloom and was astonished that this was written by the same author - it was just so different. It was beautifully written though, almost like verse in a way, and I truly believed in Alice's voice. I had so many emotions while reading it - horror, sympathy, hatred, unease and for some reason guilt. It almost felt as if I was reading something I shouldn't really be reading - which in itself is testament to Scott's talent as a writer.The story is devastatingly sad. It scared the hell out of me too and I realised that Alice's three rules - No one will see you. No one will say anything. No one will save you - are unfortunately true. How many times do we `not see' the things we don't want to see? How many times to we not want to get involved? It also gave me an insight into abuse that I had never really considered. I have never understood why someone would stay, would not tell someone what was happening - but I didn't really understand the impact of fear as a motivator. I realised after reading this though that fear for oneself is not the only type of fear - the threat against her family was so strong I could understand why it had the impact it did and it terrified me that essentially love can be used against you in this way. It also scared me that I could see signs in Alice that she too had the potential to become an abuser - how that the need to escape, to not be abused anymore overtook everything else.Would I recommend this book? Hell yes! It's not the most comfortable read but Elizabeth Scott does an outstanding job bringing the story alive. It was absolutely heartbreaking to read but Alice will be a character I remember for a long time.

Well written, I think I'd definitely like to read more from this author, but it's basically just torture porn. There's nothing to look forward to, it's just depressing, awful chapter after depressing, awful chapter.

This book was very short and I probably wouldn’t have spent £5 on it had I known - it provided only an hour or so of reading and it wasn’t particularly immersive.I believe the prose is intended to replicate the linguistics of an uneducated and traumatised teen but even still - it means descriptions and semantics are limited. Chapters are very short and there’s a lack of something.It’s not a terrible read but there are far better books in the theme of shock value and the grotesque that cater to readers that appreciate the immersive read.

This is one of the hardest books I have read. I had absolute hatred for Ray and his actions, I felt sad for Alice and admired her strength to cope with the horrific life Ray has endured her to. It is well written and believable which is what makes it so difficult to read, the story is horrible but it does happen in real life and you do believe it is happening to this little girl. It has been passed onto all of my friends and they all felt the same which is unusual as we are a diverse group with varying tastes. If you want a light hearted chick lit book this is not for you, but if you want to really engage with the characters and go through a whole range of emotions whilst reading it then definitely buy it.

When I first opened my copy of Living Dead Girl, I didn't really know what to expect, I was kind of confused when I read the first couple of pages...But then it hit me. As everything unravels, you slowly get an insight to the life of 'Alice' You'll soon see why I used quotation marks. In this book, kidnapping, pedophilia, sexual abuse, violence, drug taking... are all captured in a realistic, but discretful mannor. It hints as to what is happening, but does not visually describe it. This book is not for the faint hearted, nor under 14's I'd say. If you enjoy, a truthful, gritty story, then this is for you. The end will leave you in shock, just like the start did.